By Tournament / Rugby World Cup

England need Wales. That's the bottom line cos Stone Cold said so.... He didn't, we did, but if the RFU are seriously considering a serious proposal for the Rugby World Cup, unlike pre-2007, then Francis Baron needs to buy David Pickering more than the odd dinner.

Jotting down a list of eight venues, the Liberty Stadium, the Millennium Stadium and Cardiff's new City Stadium are crucial hosts, purely in terms of capacity rather than spreading the demographic and any excuse to venture down Caroline Street for chicken off the floor.

The brutal reality is that most of England's suitable rugby stadiums are shared with football clubs. Adams Park, the Madjeski Stadium and Vicarage Road would all be surplus to requirements because of the football season already being in full swing. It's not even like anyone decent plays there either!

Headingley would provide hospitality for the north with Welford Road, Franklins Gardens and the Sixways covering ground in the Midlands.

Kingsholm's extra lick of paint has turned it into a fine house for the partisan West Country public, and all of the above can hold 15,000 or more.

The main rivals include Australia, who hosted a magnificent tournament in 2003, as well as Japan, who narrowly missed out in 2011, but they are more likely to stage the 2019 trophy.

England tick the box as being one of the world's senior core markets and Wales successfully hosted the inaugural IRB Junior World Championship in 2008.

Pros and cons of England & Wales joint bid

Pros:

£100m guarantee would be financially viable - seeing as the RFU are loaded

Travel links are already in place and we don't mean a six hour flight from Perth to Brisbane - just standing for the six hour train journey from London to Swansea

A cosmopolitan invasion - lots more excuses to have a pint and chat about refereeing shockers

The language - can you imagine asking for a pie & chips in Japanese - パイおよび破片は喜ぶ? Exactly!

Cons:

Nights out in Newport

Having to miss Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway because of a heavyweight clash between Tonga vs. Georgia,

Spending lots of those Christmas savings on all things rugby (could be a good thing?)

Trips to IKEA the morning complete with stinging hangover after a 12-hour swill & hitting that naughty curry house.

The Rugby World Cup 2011 pool draw will be held inside a giant inflatable rugby ball venue in London on December 1.

The ball will be erected near Tower Bridge at Potters Field Park and will coincide with the southern hemisphere's elite Autumn tours, following England's tussle with the All-Blacks a day earlier, further spicing up the IRB world rankings.

Rugby in 2008 has had its fair share of firsts with two Welsh Heineken Cup quarter-finalists and South Africa pipping New Zealand to the Adelaide Sevens trophy, but the Caribbean kicking off Rugby World Cup qualification for 2011 beats them all.

It begins on April 20 where the Cayman Islands host Trinidad & Tobago in a six-day knockout qualifying tournament featuring such celebrated sides from Barbados, Bermuda, Guyana, Jamaica and Mexico.

Tony Spreadbury, who refereed the opening France v Argentina game in Rugby World Cup 2007, has been persuaded out of retirement to officiate the opening game.


April 20

Cayman Islands v Trinidad & Tobago
Guyana v Jamaica
Bahamas v Bermuda
Barbados v Mexico

April 23

Semi-finals

April 26

Final

New Zealand rugby's financial suspicions have been exposed to the world after official papers alerted that Rugby World Cup 2011 organisers feared losing the hosting rights.

New Zealand lost joint ownership of the World Cup in 2003 for failing to assure advertising free stadiums and the debacle surrounding the main Eden Park venue being moved to the ARC owned Mt Smart Stadium has thrown open a whole new pot of confusion.

Even contemplating a move, so late in the day, has sounded the alarm bells and brought into question New Zealand's capacity for hosting an even of such enormity.

The clocks ticking and if any future fears are exposed not only will the countries authority be brought before the IRB but the concession of entertaining the rugby world could be confiscated.

The International Rugby Board (IRB) world rankings will be used to seed teams at the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand.

The 12 automatic qualifiers from Rugby World Cup 2007 will be drawn into pools on December 1st 2008, in the hope of creating closer matches in 2011 according to Syd Millar, the Rugby World Cup Ltd chairman.

Defensively, Millar shirked all responsibility that it was indeed his preference to allocate the pools in 2008, but undue pressure from the host nation, New Zealand, who by coincidence will probably be top of the rankings by December, forced him to confirm the date.